Egypt's military chief starts bid for presidency

NEW YORK TIMES

January 27, 2014Updated: January 27, 2014 10:06pm

CAIRO - Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the military leader who removed Egypt's first freely elected president last year, took the first formal steps on Monday to become president, setting the stage for a return of the military-backed government that had appeared to end three years ago after a popular uprising.

El-Sissi, currently the country's defense minister, said Monday that "the trust of the people is a call that demands compliance" and that seeking the presidency was now "the call of duty," according to a statement by the military. The generals, who make up the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, authorized him to run for president, state television reported.

El-Sissi, who was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal on Monday, now appears all but certain to become Egypt's sixth president, and its fifth from the ranks of the military. Although two other candidates from the 2012 presidential elections, the leftist Hamdeen Sabahi and the moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, have left open the possibility of running again, el-Sissi is expected to win easily, in part because the government he installed last year has crushed its most potent opponents, the Muslim Brotherhood.

He stands to inherit all the problems of poverty and corruption that fueled the 2011 uprising against the country's longtime strongman, Hosni Mubarak, as well as grave new threats to public security: simmering street protests and an armed insurgency that erupted last year after the military ejected Mubarak's successor, Mohammed Morsi.

El-Sissi's positions on most policy issues remain a mystery, and the defining characteristic of his six months as Egypt's de facto ruler has been a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and, increasingly, on liberal dissenters as well.

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